AWS AMI Upgrade: Enhancements and Improvements

ArangoDB is available as Amazon Marketplace Image (AMI) for free.

The process to submit and publish a new ArangoDB image to the marketplace takes some time and you might not find the latest release in the marketplace store yet. However, updating to the latest version is not that hard.

First, log in to the virtual machine with the user ubuntu and the public DNS name of the instance.

ssh ubuntu@ec2-XX-XX-XXX-XX.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com

To start an update to a known version of ArangoDB you can use:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install arangodb=2.5.7

To upgrade an ArangoDB instance to a new major version (from 2.5.x to 2.6.x), use:

sudo apt-get install arangodb

You might get a warning that the configuration file has changed:

Configuration file '/etc/arangodb/arangod.conf'
==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation.
==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
  What would you like to do about it ?  Your options are:
   Y or I  : install the package maintainer's version
   N or O  : keep your currently-installed version
     D     : show the differences between the versions
     Z     : start a shell to examine the situation
The default action is to keep your current version.
*** arangod.conf (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ?

You should stay with the current configuration (type “N”), as there are some changes made in the configuration for AWS. If you type “Y” you will lose access from your applications to the database so make sure that database directory and server endpoint are valid.

 --server.database-directory
    needs to be  `/vol/...` for AWS
 --server.endpoint
    needs to be `tcp://0.0.0.0:8529` for AWS

If you update to a new major version, you will be asked to upgrade so that a database migration can be started:

sudo service arangodb upgrade
sudo service arangodb start

Now ArangoDB should be back to normal.

For now we have to stick with this manual process but e might create a simpler update process in the future. Please provide feedback how you use our Amazon AMI and how we can improve your user experience.